If it's possible to have such a thing as an instant tradition, this is it during a St. Cloud summer:

Wednesday nights ... thousands of happy people flocking to the spruced-up shores of Lake George ... listening to a free Summertime by George! concert ... from a terrific new venue ... with dozens of adjoining food and beverage and entertainment options.

For anybody.

And everybody.

This is exactly what we should want our city to be. This is where we should be headed.

It's been a long time coming. If you've been in St. Cloud for a while, you know we've already come a long way.

For as long as I've been here — it'll be 31 years on Oct. 5 — St. Cloud has had a complex.

Not an inferiority complex, really. It's more like a boring complex.

Collectively, St. Cloud was a city afraid to step out, afraid to be vibrant, afraid to be something special.

"The city was kind of boring," said Pioneer Place on Fifth co-owner Dan Barth, who arrived in town as a St. Cloud State University student in 1982. "There wasn't really anything to do except go to a movie."

That's changed incrementally during the past three decades, and continues to change. Which is a good thing, because it needed to.

"There's so much happening now," Barth said. "As it all started to unfold, there's a new vibrance.

"People started to realize we're a city of 100,000 — we could start acting like one. That's OK," he said.

'Most Livable' ... uh, great

But change takes time, particularly in places where there's historically been a complex.

Take, for example, the slogan on the signs on Granite City Crossing:

St. Cloud: A Most Livable City

Really?

That's the best thing we can tout about our home? That it's "livable"?

Basically, that's like saying "You Could Do Worse" or "We're Not Detroit" (or even Austin). It might be true, but it's the most tepid endorsement possible.

Still, that was about the best thing you could say about the St. Cloud I moved to in 1983. It was livable, but it wasn't a whole lot more — and it didn't seem to want to be a whole lot more.

• St. Cloud didn't take advantage of its colleges. There are more than 16,000 students at St. Cloud State, about 6,000 more at St. Cloud Technical & Community College, another 3,800 or so just down the road at College of St. Benedict/St. John's University.

That's about 26,000 college students, but the city seemed to want to ignore them instead of embracing them, to keep them in their place and just collect the rent money.

"I came to college here in 1985," Kleis said. "Almost all the entertainment was on campus.

"I didn't see the connection (with the city) when I was a college student, even for years after. We needed greater connection."

"There was a college, and there was a community," Barth said. "There was never any synergy between the two of them."

• St. Cloud didn't take advantage of its biggest natural feature. The downtown largely ignored the Mississippi River, which up here still actually looks like water.

Huge chunks of the riverfront were bass-ackwards, with parking lots where restaurants should have been and vice versa.

"The first group of people I met with when I became mayor talked about wanting to tear the (Kelly Inn/Green Mill) building down and move the parking lot," Kleis said.

"There was a period of time where if you had any type of a beer garden at all ... well, you just wouldn't do that," Kleis said.

"We don't have to have such a parochial thought process any more," Barth said. "You can still have any value you want to have. But you also can have some fun.

"I think what makes the town grow and what makes the town better are options. Everything doesn't have to be family-oriented. Everything doesn't have to be adult-oriented. We can find that balance."

Slowly but surely, we're changing

And slowly, slowly — siga siga, as the Greeks say — St. Cloud is doing that.

Things are changing. For the better.

This is no longer a big little city, with a little-city mindset. It's now more like a little big city, and it's starting to grasp the possibilities of the future instead of resting on the traditions of the past.

"It's kinda neat," Barth said. "We're starting to see — and we certainly see it, because we track ZIP codes on our ticket sales (at Pioneer Place) — people are starting to come to St. Cloud, instead of leaving St. Cloud for their entertainment."

Summer outdoor music festivals such as Summertime by George! and Pioneer Place's Takin' It To The Streets are testimonials to progressive thinking. They also reflect the growing resurgence of downtown St. Cloud.

"That maybe was even a little bit of a culture change or shift," Kleis said. "We have the lowest vacancy rate downtown in 40 years, less than 4 percent.

"A lot of that is because of the music scene and the arts. It's created an art scene that's really blossomed in the last few years."

Kleis is in the sometimes-uncomfortable position of trying to promote progress without ignoring traditions.

There's still plenty of room for improvement. It's a work in progress. But St. Cloud finally seems headed in the right direction, and headed there with a purpose.

"We do still need to work on some things, but we're plowing ahead," Kleis said. "There's a lot of exciting things happening."

"There's more of a can-do attitude now than I've seen in this town," Barth added. "People are willing to try some stuff, art crawls or whatever.

"That's good for everybody."

And that might make my town exactly what I want it to be — more than just "livable." Let's make it jump.

This is the opinion of Times columnist Dave DeLand. Contact him at 255-8771 or by email at ddeland@stcloudtimes.com. Follow him on Twitter @davedeland.